Archive for the 'Coming Up' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

But the ambitious 47-year-old superstar has put out a trio of new albums over the past three years as well as starring in several feature films, including “The Blind Side” with Sandra Bullock in 2009 and “Country Strong” alongside Gwyneth Paltrow just a year later. He’s also the loving and doting husband of fellow country star Faith Hill and the father of the pair’s three pre-teen and teenage daughters.

In what little downtime he has, McGraw is thinking of new sounds to experiment with once he’s in the studio. On the forthcoming release, “Sundown Heaven Town” – his 13th full-length recording, due Sept. 16 – the seasoned performer says he was happy to push the envelope a bit and further blur genre lines.

“I like when artists are artists,” he says during a recent phone interview, before bringing his “Sundown Heaven Town” tour to Verizon Wireless Amphitheater on Sunday with openers Kip Moore and “The Voice” Season 3 winner Cassadee Pope. “The great thing about country music is that you can really have the best of both worlds. You can do something that pushes our genre forward and you can have that real homespun quality to it, too.”

It has been five years since girl group Danity Kane officially disbanded, after a strong but brief run that included two chart-topping albums, 2006’s self-titled debut and its follow-up, Welcome to the Dollhouse. When the ladies got together to consider a reunion, however, chatting about the possibility over coffee in Los Angeles last summer, singer Aubrey O’Day says it felt like no time had passed.

“We were all able to go out and venture into our solo careers and really find our voices as individuals,” the 30-year-old, who shares her time between O.C. and L.A., says during a recent phone interview. “It was just the right time to come back together and reunite. This time, we have control and we’re able to create, write and make the music we want to make.”

Formed in 2005 under the guidance of Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs during the third season of MTV’s short-lived reality series Making the Band, Danity Kane – then comprising O’Day, Aundrea Fimbres, Shannon Bex, Dawn Richard and Wanita “D. Woods” Woodgett – became part of the mogul’s Bad Boy Records roster. The quintet’s self-titled disc spawned two hits, “Show Stopper” and “Ride for You,” while the sophomore effort produced the group’s biggest single, “Damaged.”

High-profile tours with the Pussycat Dolls and Christina Aguilera and their own headlining jaunts followed, while Diddy kept the group in the spotlight via appearances on subsequent seasons of MTB and spinoff specials. By early 2009, however, much of their fame had fizzled out, leaving the vocalists wanting to strike out on their own.

The moniker popped up not while hearing “America the Beautiful” but during a trip home from seeing Ethiopian funk band Sun Hop Fat in Oakland.

“They just brought the house down … we were amazed,” Ryan Wagner recalls. “Me and Dave (Muller) decided we were going to make a band. On the drive home, I was looking out the window and saw the purple mountains on the Grapevine, and somehow I was singing that song and made the connection.”

The name, Purple Mountains Majesties, stuck for the folk-rooted group. The Westminster-based sextet, anchored by drummer Jared Bryan and bassist Nathan Kloss, also includes Keith Manda and Alan Porter, who like Wagner (above, far right) and Muller (far left) chime in on vocals as well as all manner of gear: guitar, keys, percussion, melodica, recorder, flute, glockenspiel.

“We kind of do what the song needs, and sometimes we play multiple instruments per song,” Wagner explais. “We switch around during songs sometimes. Sometimes it’s up to three or four times.”

For more than a decade, L.A.-based singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Ken Andrews (right) had read through scores of handwritten messages, bulletin board posts, Facebook comments and emails from fans requesting more music from his ’90s alternative rock band Failure.

The group – principally comprising Andrews, guitarist Greg Edwards (left) and drummer Kellii Scott – disbanded in 1997, a year after the release of third album Fantastic Planet. Almost 17 years later, reasons for the split are fuzzy, ranging from despondency after lackluster promotion of that last effort, now a cult classic among aficionados, to increased drug use amongst members.

“It all felt pretty good,” Andrews says of that performance during a recent phone interview. “We still made a few mistakes here and there. We had rehearsed for that show, but when you’re coming back from zero in terms of knowing the songs and then doing a 17-song set, it’s challenging.”

Long before Ireland's new sensation the Strypes began mixing retro-rock and R&B, Orange County's own Earwigs were blending '60s blues-rock and '70s punk into a riotous brew that predates everyone from Australian outfit the Vines and England's winning Arctic Monkeys.

Back in the early '80s, the group of Fountain Valley teens, led by singer-songwriter Michael Ubaldini (left), blasted out of the gates and became one of the best-known regional bands of the era. Now, for the first time since 2003, the Earwigs are reuniting to play two special shows.

Frontman Ubaldini, who has since developed into a local Americana favorite, will be joined by original members Ashton Raco-Rands (guitar), Tom Hughes (bass) and Dave Reed (drums) as well as guest bassist Jerry Adamowicz to tear through the band's timeless, hard-hitting sound, a melodi ous collision between the Yardbirds, the early Stones, the Clash and Big Star.

Getting back together, Ubaldini explained at a recent rehearsal, is "kind of a response to the vinyl 45 we put out that is now selling for up to $400 online." That single, with "She's So Naive" on the A-side and "Here Come the Earwigs" on the flip, was released in 1982. "We didn't sound like any other bands from that period; we had our own sound."

After the success of its infectious 2010 debut, Pickin’ Up the Pieces, neo-soul and indie-pop sextet Fitz and the Tantrums were faced with a stylistic dilemma.

The record, which leaned heavily on the L.A. group’s Motown and R&B influences, spawned its share of throwback singles, chiefly “MoneyGrabber” and “Breakin’ the Chains of Love,” and led to several tours, national radio airplay and numerous live television appearances.

But two years later, when the time came for a follow-up, frontman Michael Fitzpatrick says he and his fellow band members – co-vocalist Noelle Scaggs, bassist Joe Karnes, drummer John Wicks, keyboardist Jeremy Ruzumna and sax and flute player James King – felt they had much more to offer. They wanted to take bigger risks and further explore their collective influences, incorporating more pop and rock elements into their sound.

“When you make a first record, you’re just making your record and there are no fans,” he says during a recent phone interview. Fitzpatrick was enjoying some downtime at his L.A. home with his girlfriend and 6-month-old son while on break after a recent European jaunt. “All of a sudden you have a little bit of success, you have fan – and you go into record the next album and you’re like, ‘Oh wait, now I’m worried about what the fans will think.’”

Singer-songwriter Neil Finn creates his art like the fine craftsman he’s been for more than three decades in bands such as Crowded House and Split Enz as well as his own solo work.

Nearly every day he’s home in New Zealand, Finn, who brings his latest tour to the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles on Wednesday, heads for his studio, putting in something akin to banker’s hours in search of melodies and words, sounds and songs.

“As always, I’m working on songs at home and putting together demos,” Finn says by phone from Australia, discussing the genesis of Dizzy Heights, his first proper solo album in 13 years. “And some of them were a little unusual for me.

“Things like ‘Impressions’ and ‘Better Than TV’ had a groove at the center that was unusual for me. Coincidentally, really, but it seemed synchronous, I had been talking to (Mercury Rev’s) Dave Fridmann for a long time about working together sometime.”

Elaborate body art, fast-and-loud tunes, classic cars, skateboarding and BMX are integral parts of Orange County’s culture, making it the perfect place to host the annual Musink Tattoo Convention and Music Festival.

Since its debut in 2008, when TV personality and tattoo artist Kat Von D was curator, the three-day fest has expanded to feature more than 300 world-renowned tattoo artists, pro skate and BMX demos, and live performances by artists in the punk rock, rockabilly/psychobilly, hardcore and metal genres. The Used, Danzig, the Cult, Face to Face, Pennywise, Bad Religion, Thrice, Against Me!, Alkaline Trio, the Buzzcocks, Tiger Army and Reverend Horton Heat have all headlined nights at the alternative shindig.

The seventh installment, held this weekend in three large hangars at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa, includes a few new elements, thanks to this year’s overseer, Travis Barker, the heavily inked drummer for Blink-182 and rap/punk supergroup Transplants.

In the past few years, Orange County has become something of a Mecca for garage rock and old-school punk revivalists, including Atlanta’s Black Lips.

“It’s fantastic,” the group’s guitarist and vocalist Cole Alexander said. “When we go to Orange County, I feel like we are rock stars.”

Days after the release this week of Underneath the Rainbow, their first album in three years, Black Lips will return to O.C. for Burgerama III, a two-day festival at Santa Ana’s Observatory served up by Fullerton’s Burger Records, with a menu offering samplers from more than 70 bands.

The Growlers and the Lips top Saturday’s bill, while L.A. punk outfit FIDLAR caps Sunday’s fare. In between, the stuffed lineup will spotlight other local favorites, such as Cosmonauts, Tomorrow's Tulips and Tijuana Panthers, plus Pitchfork-approved favorites like Mac DeMarco and Nobunny, Sleep, Death, Bleached, Allah-Las, Together Pangea and more.

Ronnie James Dio was a larger-than-life performer, renowned for his powerful voice, beloved by metal heads.

In addition to fronting his own self-named band, he also served as vocalist for British rock outfits Rainbow and Black Sabbath. He joined Sabbath after Ozzy Osbourne left that band in 1979, around the same time Dio was departing Ritchie Blackmore’s group. Dio started revisiting and extending his time with Sabbath mainstays Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi in 2006 under the moniker Heaven & Hell, named after that lineup’s first album together.

Dio died of stomach cancer in 2010 at 67, yet his impact continues in spirit. Each year his wife and former manager, Wendy Dio, along with several of his closest friends, host an annual awards gala in Los Angeles to celebrate his career and to raise money for the Ronnie James Dio Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund.

This year’s third gala, March 17 at Avalon in Hollywood, will honor musicians and industry professionals who have contributed to the charity or the metal community in a positive way. Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford will be given the Man on the Silver Mountain award, while producer Greg Fidelman is being bestowed the Master of the Moon title.